Sidney Colvin

“ But what gained for Flaxman in this interval a general and European fame was not his work in sculpture proper, but those outline designs to the poets, in which he showed not only to what purpose he had made his own the principles of ancient design in vase-paintings and bas-reliefs, but also by what a natural affinity, better than all mere learning, he was bound to the ancients and belonged to them. The designs for the Iliad and Odyssey were commissioned by Mrs Hare Naylor ”

“ Posterity will doubt whether it was the fault of Flaxman or of his age, which in England offered neither training nor much encouragement to a sculptor, that he is weakest when he is most ambitious, and most inspired when he makes the least effort ”

“ The two special encouragers of his youth were the painter Romney, and a cultivated clergyman, Mr Mathew, with his wife, in whose house in Rathbone Place the young Flaxman used to meet the best “blue-stocking” society of those days, and, among associates of his own age, the artists Blake and Stothard, who became his closest friends. Before this he had begun to work with precocious success in clay as well as in pencil. At twelve years old he won the first prize of the Society of Arts for a medal, and became a public exhibitor in the gallery of the Free Society of Artists ”

“ To know Flaxman at his best it is necessary to be acquainted not only with the original studies for such designs as these (which, with the exception of the Hesiod series, are far finer than the engravings) , but still more with those almost innumerable studies from real life which he was continually producing with pen, tint or pencil. These are the most delightful and suggestive sculptor’s notes in existence ”

“ Of these the principal public collections are at University College, in the British Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum; many others are dispersed in public and private cabinets. Every one knows the excellence of the engraved designs to Homer, Dante, Aeschylus and Hesiod, in all cases save when the designer aims at that which he cannot hit, the terrible or the grotesque. ”

“ Soon after his election as associate, he published a scheme, half grandiose, half childish, for a monument to be erected on Greenwich Hill, in the shape of a Britannia 200 ft. high, in honour of the naval victories of his country. ”

“ He soon ceased modelling himself for Wedgwood, but continued to direct the work of other modellers employed for the manufacture at Rome. He had intended to return after a stay of a little more than two years, but was detained by a commission for a marble group of a Fury of Athamas, a commission attended in the sequel with circumstances of infinite trouble and annoyance, from the notorious Comte-Évêque, Frederick Hervey, earl of Bristol and bishop of Derry. ”